Strength of the Corbett kids is almost a miracle

AS THE evidence in the Molly Martens case edges closer to the stuff of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, the battle for the mantle of victimhood continues between the legal teams for the late Jason Corbett and the Martens. For the Corbetts, most poignantly Jason’s two children Jack and Sarah, who released balloons to raise awareness of domestic abuse before the case, their father, bludgeoned to death in his sleep is indisputably the victim.

In the Martens’ account, it is Molly living under the thumb of an Irish tyrant who was given to volcanic rages and binge drinking, the latter which Molly helpfully explained, is an Irish cultural thing.

We may possibly never find out what exactly went down at 160 Panther Creek Court in North Carolina. That’s not to say that the versions of events are equally compelling. Sharon Martens’ evidence of falling asleep after her husband left their bedroom, armed with a baseball bat, to investigate the racket in the bedroom directly above them stretches credulity.

Molly’s fear that Jason’s family would kill her and take the kids away seems designed to paint the Corbetts as a gang of wild savages with a casual attitude to law and order.

BUT, whatever Judge Hall’s decision, the innocent victims at the core of this case are Jack and Sarah Corbett-Lynch. At 19 and 17, they are old enough to fight for justice for their father and take a break from school or college to travel to the US court.

They were prepared for the hideous testimony about their father choking their step mother during sex or the expert witness claiming that their mother Mags’ possible death was by strangulation as opposed to the severe asthma attack that was the established cause of death in 2006.

Yet Sarah running from the courtroom on hearing recordings of her youthful testimony about her dad’s cruelty to her mother reveals the depths of her anguish.

The realisation that the testimony, which she has since recanted, is the potential key to Molly walking free must be as painful as being forced to relive the confusion of the small girl she once was, thrust into a violent maelstrom that robbed her of the normal scaffolding of a young life.

An episode of extraordinary brutality has cast a shadow over her and her brother’s lives from which, depending on the hearing’s outcome, they may never find respite.

Jack and Sarah were only 10 and 8 when they were subjected to the attention of wellmeaning strangers and a custody battle. When Jack heartbreakingly told a social worker that if he had a miracle, it would be for ‘his parents to stop fighting and for his dad to be alive’ – both his biological parents were dead, and he was about to lose the only mother he ever really knew.

ATAPE of Jason bad-temperedly barking at his wife about the family dinner, the children pleading with them to stop rowing, shows that home life was often tense. Brought home to Limerick by their ‘earth parents’ Tracey and David Corbett Lynch, Jack sent Molly or ‘mom’ a message telling her he loved her. He asked her not to put it on social media, but in a stunning act of betrayal, she duly did.

Both children retracted their accounts of their dad being abusive at home. Children of that age are vulnerable, but none more so than traumatised Sarah and Jack. They would have said anything to keep their loved ones close and be looked after, so they were turned into pawns in a murder trial.

Another betrayal of two blameless children. That they survived it to become welladjusted youngsters shows their strength of character.

That they survived it to champion their father’s good name is almost a miracle.